LarryRoth.net

There is a good article at IBM Developer Works about using the FindBugs static code analysis tool. Test cases are important, but when you inherit code, a good static analysis code tool can really help you out. The article is a couple years old, but still quite relevant. I thought this comment summed it up nicely. From the article:

Much of the knowledge of how a class works (or is supposed to work) evaporates shortly after it is written, in the form of implicit assumptions, invariants, and expected use cases that are clear in the developer’s head but never get written down in the form of design notes, comments, or documentation. Existing code is always harder to work with than new code.¹

Even with strong test cases, you can still miss more complex bug patterns. FindBugs can help you out.

This article at StreetFish provides a summary of the ongoing research with brain implants at Brown university. It shows some (early) exciting results for enabling people with disabilities and perhaps increased HCI for everyone.

From the article:

Braingate it its name, and it was created by scientists at Brown university and already it has been used to give computer control to a 25-year-old Massachusetts paraplegic, allowing such functions as controlling the tv, his prosthetic arm and drawing shapes using the cursor.
The system requires an implant of a 4mm square chip into the motor cortex, connected to the brain by 100 electrodes, each measuring the electrical signals of the cells they connect to. The signals are then calibrated by thinking of particular movements, and the computer works out the rest.

I found additional information about this project on the Brown Web site.

• Controlling Movement Through Thought Alone
• BraingateTM *: Developing a Device to Provide Motor Impaired Patients withA Novel Neural Output (1.2mb pdf)

If you are in the market for a new Web server, Sun has announced a new 4U Web server, the Sun Fire x4500 that you may be interested in. WARNING: it is only capable of housing 2 dual core x64 AMD processors and can only accommodate 24GB of storage. Think that will be enough?

Ok, to be fair, it does start at ~$33,000. That’s a little more that I paid for our last XServe, but—MAN—it sure looks sweet…